


Magi in the Upside Down

by oneoneandone



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27113362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneoneandone/pseuds/oneoneandone
Summary: They probably should have talked about it, the costumes.
Relationships: Kelley O'Hara/Emily Sonnett
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	Magi in the Upside Down

Kelley looked her girlfriend up and down and up again and burst out laughing.

“Of fucking course,” she said, her pre-party beer sloshing over her fingers as she shook with amusement. “Of fucking course.”

Emily just shrugged. “At least I didn’t use a marker.”

—–

It’s going to be their first public outing, a Halloween party in downtown Atlanta hosted by some liquor label. They get invited to these things now, after the World Cup win, the very public campaign for equal treatment from the federation and FIFA. People have taken notice, people with some modicum of power and money, and somehow these two girls from Georgia find themselves hobnobbing with movie stars and models these days.

The invitation comes a just a few weeks before the holiday, sent down to them via their managers. Via Kelley’s manager, really, and only after Alex turned the party down. “Can’t drink with a baby on board,” she’d responded to the defender when Kelley had texted to tease her. But it doesn’t matter who it was originally intended for, because it sounds like a great night, and they quickly decide to accept.

Quickly enough, anyway, after a quiet discussion about what it would mean.

Would they go as teammates? As friends?

As partners and lovers?

It had been Emily who’d decided the terms.

“I want to hold your hand,” she whispered, sitting on Kelley’s lap in the dark evening light of the older woman’s condo, the lights of downtown Atlanta shining like stars behind them. “And not have to think about whether I’m standing too close to you, or if I should stop drinking so I don’t accidentally forget where we are and kiss you.”

Emily looked down at her, fingers in Kelley’s long, dark hair.

“I’m ready–to be out. I wasn’t earlier, and I should have been. But I am now.”

She looked tentative, as if she was afraid her girlfriend would disagree, but Kelley just smiled up at her, and wrapped her arms around the younger woman’s waist, pulling her closer.

“So,” the brunette kissed over her jaw, “who are we going as?”

—–

Hopper and Eleven was actually their third idea. The first two ideas were unquestionably–unmentionably–terrible. But the Stranger Things get-up was something they could manage pretty easily between a few thrift shops and their parents’ attics, something that wouldn’t require more than the bare minimum of effort.

“You all set?” Kelley asked on the phone the night before the event, “Got your pink dress all set?” She laughed where she was sitting, and drew the blade of her razor up her leg. Emily’s voice on the other end of the phone was low and sultry, and she wondered what the blonde was up to across the city, in her bedroom at her parents’ house.

Em laughed on the other end of the line. “You’re going to die,” she promised, “when you see me, I mean. You’re going to die at how much effort I put into this. I went all out, babe. Like, all-all out.”

“Like, effort?” Kelley asked, frowning just the slightest as she licked a finger to wipe away the slightest dot of blood just over her ankle. “I thought we agreed to go as simple as we could?”  
  
But even as she said the words, she rolled her eyes at herself for ever thinking that the younger woman could manage to put only the minimum of effort into something as important as a Halloween costume. A Halloween costume for an event as important as their unofficially official coming out.

“I can’t wait to see it,” Kelley smiled to herself. “Though I hope you didn’t do anything too drastic. Or too involved. Because I don’t plan on staying at the party long–I have other ideas about where the night will go. And I’d hate for all that … effort … to go to waste.”

—–

The problem was, of course, that they both tried to be the bigger person.

Since the moment Kelley had suggested it, the two women had needled each other back and forth–always love behind their teasing–about who would be the best Eleven. And the arguments were compelling, of course. What could you expect from two highly educated, competitive, stubborn women?

Emily argued that she was the younger of the two, she should get to wear the Eleven costume, that she had the right shade of hair for it, that everybody already knew she was the weird one of the two.

Not to be outdone, Kelley countered every charge. Her hair was closer to Eleven’s actual hair color, she owned a shirt very much like the one the character had sported in the latest season. And, the argument that got her quite the glare from her girlfriend: that Emily made too many faces, was too prone to laughing randomly. Eleven, everybody knows, Kelley pointed out, was a stoic character. A bad-ass.

A character like that needed a _bitch_ to play her.

—–

Emily clutched her belly, holding onto the door to Kelley’s apartment for support as she laughed deeply at the sight before her.

"I–I thought you were going–,“ she struggled to get the words out, "as Eleven.”

The older woman stood before her in the doorway, glaring as she wiped up drips of spilled beer with her sock-covered toes. “No, I told you you could be Eleven if it meant that much to you.”

Em’s mouth fell open, “But I said _you_ could–”

Her voice was low, annoyance warring with amusement as she realized what they must have done.

“Well, fuck,” she grinned as Kelley stepped back, resigned, to let Emily into the apartment, “I think we just _Gift of the Magi’d_ each other.”

She took the beer from her girlfriend and finished it in a single swallow, smirking at the brunette standing before her in the living room as she put the empty bottle down on the coffee table at her side.

Kelley groaned, because it was true. They’d fucking _Gift of the Magi’d_ each other, both giving up what they’d actually wanted to let the other have it.

“And now we have to go to this party both dressed up like a depressed sheriff from the late-80s,” she mumbled, stepping closer to Emily, looking at the woman there dressed in what was a pretty realistic-looking police officer’s uniform: hat, shield, gun-belt, and all.

Emily laughed softly. “That’s not entirely true–we’re like a before and after. There’s me, first season Hopper, all professional-looking and cool. Ready to protect and serve.” She rested a hand on Kelley’s hip, fingers slipping under the hem of her shirt there to find warm, soft skin.

“The fake mustache is a nice touch,” Kelley whispered, tracing the fuzzy accessory with a finger as the younger woman smiled at her.

“And then we have you as his more bedraggled alter ego, season three Hopper, complete with ridiculous Hawaiian shirt, bloody cut over the eye and–,” she licked a finger and rubbed over one of the dark spots peppering Kelley’s cheeks and jaw, “Sharpie? No, mascara-stubble, to give him that authentic ’ _The World’s Gone to Hell and I Just Don’t Care Anymore_ ’ aura that just–” 

Kelley kissed her, deeply. Tongue slipping past Emily’s lips and stopping her from speaking as she pulled her partner close, pulling back only slightly to laugh as Emily took off her hat and tossed it, not even bothering to look where it fell.

"Let’s be fashionably late, shall we?“ she whispered, looking into those clear blue eyes and finding everything she felt reflected back at her.

And Emily grinned. "Good thing I brought more mustache glue. Got a feeling I might need it.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Freaks Come Out at Night," Whodini


End file.
